


I Rolled a Nat1 For Cool Titles, and I had a -3 Modifier To Start With

by Fionavar



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Crack, Drabbles, Gen, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-06-28 05:38:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15700905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fionavar/pseuds/Fionavar
Summary: Snippets of things and tumblr prompts that aren't long enough for their own posting.





	1. Khem and Shay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bettydice (BettyKnight)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BettyKnight/gifts), [Dakoyone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dakoyone/gifts), [codenamecynic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/codenamecynic/gifts), [onemooncircles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onemooncircles/gifts).



> prompted by Bettydice on tumblr

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A poem, prompted by Bettydice.

Eyes hold, and Khem _knows._ The world trembles  
and flares into wondrous possibility. The mantle  
of a lifetime’s dreams settles over the monk,  
clasped safely around pain-sculpted shoulders.  
Three shapes, three titles, three constant themes  
haunt the tangled night-wood of her mind: and here  
stands one. The shock of recognition doubled  
(slave and Silent, or is she Thirsty?) strikes  
like a poisoned dart, a knife held low, a rival’s spell.

Khem dreams: the Silent’s wound drips blood  
or sometimes ashes, poison, water salt as tears.  
The Thirsty is like death itself: dry and endless  
in its patience, though ever unfulfilled, unslaked.  
One of these is Shay foretold; uncertainty  
whispers thorn-sharp fear across her skin. The need  
runs deep: more than blood or breath, she burns to _know._

Khem’s magic shapes a spiralled way: she walks  
within the quiet spaces of Shay’s mind. Each step rings  
strange and true: a childhood, warm and swiftly flown  
as summer nights, the gentle touch of stronger hands  
soon lost. Grief, all stones and bones. A murmured lullaby  
under screams, a tool harsh-forged and cruelly used.

There is no comfort in her to give, no peace:  
Khem lets the silence stand between them, full  
of splintered mirror-glass, slicing and blood-edged  
now clear, now crazed: the reflections of each other.

On such impossible foundations is woven  
a fragile, certain trust.


	2. Kayazi Poem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty prompted a Kayazi poem... She got this.

_Strongest spirit, swift, unbroken_

_All your sorrows lie unspoken_

_You wear your scars with bitter pride_

_Upon your skin, and deep inside.  
_

_Do you know I watch you? Do you see_

_This yearning slowly filling me?_

_I want to hold you safe and tight_

_To make you know it’s all all right_

_I want to touch your muscled arms_

_To make you understand your charms_

_But I’m not worth you, precious Shay_

_There’s so much I cannot say_

_And I’m afrai-_

“Katy?” Shay was standing in the doorway - Katy had forgotten to close the door, and she was _there_ , and she was _looking_ _at her_ -

Blushing furiously as Shay regarded her with those dark eyes full of soft curiosity, Katy scrunched up the loose sheet of paper she’d been writing on and frantically looked around for a way to hide it. She couldn’t set it on fire, even if her magic behaved  itself she’d probably still burn the desk, and there wasn’t anywhere to throw it that Shay couldn’t - okay, Shay probably wouldn’t go looking at her stuff, but Harper would, and who knew about Khem, and if anyone else saw it she would just _die_ \- 

Oh! She was a _genius!_ Katy shoved the ball of paper in her mouth and started chewing it.

“Katy? Are you all right?”

“Mmhmpmh!” She nodded her head so quickly and rapidly it kind of hurt. 

“Why are you eating paper?”

“Mmmhmhmhmffftm!” Katy said, which was as close to _I just felt like a mouthful of paper_ as she could get with a mouth full of paper. 

Actually, the paper tasted horrible and she had a paper cut on her gum that stung like crazy, and maybe she wasn’t quite as much of a genius as she’d thought, but what else was she supposed to have done?

“…okay,” Shay said, although she still looked a bit concerned. “Well, dinner’s ready if you’re coming…”

“Mhmhmm!” Katy said, nodding, and then finally Shay went away and she could spit out the disgusting mess of paper, ink, saliva and a little bit of blood. Lesson learned: if she was going to try and write poetry, she needed better tasting paper.


	3. SHART

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No excuses. No apologies.  
> The tag had to be used.

His eyes, deeper and bluer than the ocean on a calm day, stared into dark, fathomless eyes in which secrets swam, like the same ocean but much deeper, like down where turtle-monster shells come to rest. Her gaze raked over his chiselled features – the strong jaw and fine nose, the frosting of silver in his hair that made him look distinguished but not, like, too old. Shay reached up and touched the scar that marred the perfect cleft of his chin.

“How’d you get that one?”

Cort’s strong fingers closed about hers gently, lifting them from his face, and his voice was even gentler when he answered, “I… cut myself shaving.”

“Oh,”  Shay said, and she didn’t lift her hand from where it rested in his. “Well, that’s kind of disappointing. I thought maybe it was a duel with pirates, or saving Celeste’s life, or…”

“I am a disappointing man, I fear,” he said, his eyes filling with tears, the salt water making them look more like oceans than ever. “I cannot even find the way to make up to Harper for the way I treated him. I’ve spoken to the lovely and powerful sorceress who is his closest friend now, but…”

“Katy is very wise,” Shay agreed. “And beautiful.”

“Yes,” Cort agreed with her agreement. “But I cannot seem to do as she advises. She must know Taliesin better than I do after all this time, but… I had another idea, instead. I hoped, in your kindness and generosity, you might agree to assist me.”

“I will try,” Shay said shyly, the way she does sometimes that is just so adorable. “What do you need?”

Cort bent down and whispered a few words into her ear, the badass shredded one.

 “I… think I could do that,” she said, shivering at his warm breath, which smelled of manly musk and ocean breezes.

“I’m glad,” Cort said, and bent his head down to kiss her.

Shay wrapped her lithe, well-muscled, very strong arms around him and held on like he was saving her from drowning in the ocean of his eyes.

There was the sound of two pairs of footsteps – one strong, masculine and certain, the other beautiful and dainty like an elven dancer’s.

“What the actual fuck.”

“Shay?!?!?!?”

Cort broke away from Shay, with his lip bleeding because he’d caught it on Shay’s broken tusk. “I couldn’t think of another way to reach you,” he said, his eyes filling again because of how much he was feeling and completely not because his lip was hurting him. “I thought if you caught us kissing it’d make you feel jealous.”

“Well, it fucking worked!” Harper growled sexily before he threw himself at Cort and knocked him over, and they began making out on the floor.

“Me too!” Katy growled, staring at Shay for one endless moment before she too threw herself into kissing Shay, although she managed the broken tusk sooo much better than Cort had. And they made out too, but not for too long because it got weird with Harper right beside them, and then Katy hooked a finger in Shay’s tunic and tugged her toward her bedroom, before Shay swept Katy up in her arms.

_\- From the secret diary of Ceitidh Mhuilneir, powerful sorceress and amazing authoress_


	4. The Rules

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A character reflection, of sorts. I was thinking about Kehm's lawful/robot tendencies. She struggles with her allies, but has distinct patterns in how she deals with them. I was thinking about what those were, and then this happened. More or less.

Khem is a wizard, and wizardry has rules. It is magic under will, the power of the Weave drawn and shaped by studied gesture, incantation and component. It is classed and codified, but not limited. There is infinite potential - for change, for chance, for discovery – within the known strictures. Discipline and logic do not stifle wizardry, but focus it, refine it until it burns like silver in her veins. Wizardry is power, and power has rules.

Khem is a Red Wizard, and the rules are malleable. It is expected of the students of her academy, the wizards of her order. Her will and her thirst for power are the only guides she needs to find her way through the traps laid by others’ desires. The rule is: _honour your teachers and obey your superiors_. It means: _don’t act against power unless you know what you’re doing and don’t be caught_.  Or more, or less, depending on the circumstances and the choices she makes. It is a rule she becomes very practised at working with, like the others. They bend and flex and change in her hands. Red Wizards have power, and so do choices.

Khem is a diviner, a dreamer of the truth. Truth is like wizardry: it is a bright and difficult power with its own rules. Dreams are different, mercurial and shifting metaphors that do not answer to her will. There are patterns Khem has observed, the presence of three recurring figures, but if dreams are ruled, it is not by her. So she finds her own rules about them: _write, remember, do not resist the beauty or embrace the pain_. There is power in truth dream-found, and power has rules. 

 -

It is different beyond Thay. The few rules she can discern are abortive, arbitrary things, twitching uneasily under examination like a half-animated corpse. They go unwritten, even unspoken; Khem learns to recognise when she has broken one, but that knowledge is of limited use. Without understanding the rule, she could make the same error in the next breath. She learns, because she is a wizard, but it is a slow and frustrating process. She is translating by reading phrases in an unknown language to its native speakers and observing their reactions. She’s not sure if they’re offended by her words or by her accent.

It is difficult beyond Thay, although the time she spends in the Underdark is easier than the time in Waterdeep. The rules of the Underdark are clearer and pliable, like those of her home: _survive, don’t show weakness, find your own way to what you desire_. There are people like those she knows, with their own tangled paths to power. It is a game she knows, and an environment in which she can survive. Or so she believes.

It changes beyond Thay. In the eternal night of the caves, remembering the sun seems almost the trick of a disordered mind; light is the fitful whimsy of wild ambient magic, of crystals and lichens, of slow-pouring rivers of fire. Khem needs no certain illumination to see the moment in balance, the sudden and decisive sideways tilt, when it overtakes her. It reorders everything. Where she was dependent, she trusts; where she was irritated, she teaches; where she was dying, she lives. The three recurring figures are more than her dreams have shown them, and she knows the truth when it is upon her. That is her gift.

-

They are her allies, and she does not know how to be theirs. It is not something she is equipped to be. She struggles still with the everyday rules; the rules of alliance are another thing entirely. She has named only one person as an ally before, and Nebastis had known the mutable rules of Thay. Nebastis had died within their treacherous allowances.  

They are her allies, and she must do better than that. She must be what they need her to be, to bend without breaking, to adapt without changing. Her allies are questions that her dreams have always asked, and their answers are finally within her grasp. Khem is a diviner: the restless fire of her nature is the illumination of what was dark and ambiguous. Few things are as unpredictable and mysterious as these three. Perhaps none have ever mattered quite as much.

They are her allies, and slowly the rules accumulate. She had thought to keep them simple and inarguable as the rules of wizardry, but she is a Red Wizard after all. The rules are honeycombed with reservations and precautions, twisting in her words and choices. They come into conflict: which rule takes priority? Which ally? The rules are defences, too, masks and smokescreens to hide where she is weak and vulnerable. It would be all too easy for her allies to hurt her, in brash carelessness or clever malice; better they never see the wounds that still ulcerate and fester.

-

_Be honest_. It is a simple rule, and less a burden than many. Truth is a bright and difficult power, and Khem values power. As soon as she recognises the recurring figures of her dreams walking in the waking world, she decides to offer them honesty. She gives her thirst for power, her will, her choices; she demonstrates them clearly, so that there may be no doubt. To tell the truth, she tells her allies, I am a poor liar. Her hands flex and turn about each other in sour paradox. Lies come awkwardly and unreadily to her tongue, but easily become the medium in which she moves. Like a scarlet fish she swims through black ink, exaggeration and omission and missing context concealing her, filtering through her gills until they are part of her very body.

_Do your best_. This rule, too, is an old habit turned to new purposes. To pursue power among the Red Wizards is to demand perfection. The smallest mistake may be the poison on your enemy’s dagger, and all about you are enemies. She offers her allies that drive harnessed to their ends; her knowledge in service of their questions; her power awaiting only their direction. That is difficult, for she is used to answering to her will alone, but it is not where this rule becomes a burden. She studies them as intently as ever she puzzled over an ancient grimoire, striving fiercely to speak their language. Her mistakes are frequent and painful; she chokes on apologies and reparations that seem to make no difference at all, and clings to the hope that one day, she will understand.

_The choice is theirs_. This is the hardest rule of all. There are times she sees clearly what must be done for them, when it would be easy to stretch out her hand and impose her will. That choice is in her blood; it is what she was made to choose. The Red Wizards are rulers. To lay down her desire so that others may trample their paths over it is willing powerlessness. It is contrary and alien to all that she knows, but not to all that she is, not entirely. A choice was made for her, on a day that is branded like a hand against her flesh, and so Khem is determined not to choose for them. They are her allies, and not her slaves: slaves are easier to protect.

-

It doesn’t help that she _cares_ for them. That emotion is strange to her, a fierce imperative of howling need that drains out the quieter, surer voices of discipline and logic. She distrusts it, resents the invading certainty that her allies must be kept safe from harm, protected against pain even if she must take it upon herself instead. It is not welcome, but it is truth, and so she must find a way to live with it. The edges must be blunted so that it cannot cut her.

The final rule is: _Remember it will end._ It doesn’t help. All things are temporary, she knows. Even sane, orderly wizardry and its rules change – in cataclysms or in the gentler shifts of daily usages. The present is too vivid, shot through with its urgencies and necessities, with the fact she has allies she does not understand and self-imposed rules of dubious value. Her will is not what it was, and neither is she. Her allies are less strange, now, than what she has become.

_Remember it will end._

It is the only rule so far unbroken. Some days it shimmers and promises like a distant mirage; some days it glowers like a storm on the horizon.

It doesn’t help.


End file.
